Party Fail

Streamers hung like Spanish moss from the ceiling.  Table was set, punch bowl gleaming and brimming with red sweet stuff that I hoped wouldn't be spilled on the carpet.  I slipped into my heels a minute before 3 and finished folding the napkins.  Eggs were deviled, petits were foured, and sands were wiched.  The guest list had been carefully crafted from among my most valued and sympathetic friends.  This would be the pity party to end all pity parties. 

Friends began to arrive, coming in by twos like Noah's Ark.  They looked so happy in their twos, always someone to run a three legged race with or hold your punch glass while you went to the bathroom or a large database of shared memory to draw on when you couldn't remember the name of your dear cousin Harry's fiancé. 

After a few rounds of exchanging pleasantries, we got the party started.  Someone asked how things were going with finding someone to be a two with, instead of forever a one - holding my own punch glass and forgetting dear cousin Harry's - anyway.  I launched into my tale of despairing woeful one-ness, hoping to reap some quality pity.  One of the husbands, not given to pity, straight away instructed me to hold out for the best, which another chap echoed with comments that whoever he was had better be quality or he'd have something to answer for. 

This wasn't the sort of pity I was hoping for, so I tried again.  I took the Charlotte Lucas angle, wondering aloud if one could really be enthralled by romance anymore, or if things weren't mostly logistics and dealing with human flaws and managing expectations influenced by romantic ideals.  Vanauken writes as though the world without the girl he loves might never find spring again or hear another nightingale.  He quotes from an unknown poet in A Severe Mercy.

To hold her in my arms against the twilight and be her comrade for ever - this was all I wanted so long as my life should last… And this, I told myself with a kind of wonder, this was what love was: this consecration, this curious uplifting, this sudden inexplicable joy, and this intolerable pain.  p.29

But that's all stuff and nonsense.  Romantic fluff penned by mad poets and whispered by swooning lovers.  Much better to pick out someone with a decent job and of good character.  Anything more than that is asking a bit much.  Is it, really?  One of the girls questioned.  To want the someone who you plan on spending the rest of your life with to be fascinating and to impassion you to be yourself and unlock things in you that no one else ever could - that doesn't seem too much to hope for. 

This pity party was turning into a royal shamozzle.  Not only was I getting no pity, but the cynicism I had so carefully nurtured was withering before my eyes.  What I was hearing from my dearly loved twos was don't rule out the ordinary good guys, but they'd better be the cream of the crop ordinary good if they were going to pass the friend test.  With that, the party ended.  There were a respectable number of leftovers, and no punch was spilt in the writing of this post.

In conclusion, I've been denied pity, but given hope.  Yes, I'm still a one.  Yes, someday I'd like to be a two.  When will that someday come?  Only God knows, and only God knows whether he'll like to dance or like poetry, or live in some abominable climate like Sasketchewan or Florida.  Instead of being so concerned with knowing, I've concluded that my time would be better spent living.  

Cheers to faith under frustration,

Little Miss Sunshine